Qo akti?

"Qo akti?" (What to do?) is an artwork project by Mathilde ter
Heijne. It is a video installation on six monitors about the
philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The text of the movie is spoken
in Glosa. It was displayed in the gallery Martina
Detterer,
Frankfurt/M. (Germany) in June 2003.
"Qo akti?" is certainly the first serious Glosa movie.

The
diversity of languages in our world has led to the fact that many
people cannot understand each other. English, the most useful
language, is relatively easy to learn compared to French, but for a
Chinese person it is more difficult to speak than Arabic is for us.

As
a solution to language diversity, Professor Hogben developed
Interglossa (later Glosa), an international language,
in 1943. It has a vocabulary of only 1000 words and is based on
scientific terms. It is a language that has no grammar, and that is
not bound to one country or one part of the world and so is neutral.
It is a language that can be learned in a single day and is suitable
for everyone.

The
video work Qo Akti? is
related to a never shot
film by Italian
director
Liliana Cavani about the French philosopher Simone Weil. Mathilde ter
Heijne has had part of the script of Lettere dall' Interno
(written by Liliana Cavani together with Italo Moscati in 1971)
translated into Glosa. Glosalist Wendy Ashby developed this language
together with Ron Clark in the 1980's. She has translated and spoken
a part of the original script by Liliana Cavani in newly-developed
Euro-Glosa.

The
script of the little-known film is a melodrama of partly biographical
and partly documentary character. The life of Simone Weil (a
struggle to free the working-class and provide equal opportunity for
everyone) and her thoughts (about death, suffering, and deliverance)
picture the following string of events: from her working in a factory
in France at the beginning of the 1930's and from the Spanish Civil
War to her death at the beginning of the 1940's in England, where she
died at the age of 34 of malnourishment and exhaustion.

Six
impressing sequences like those are enough for the Netherlands artist
Mathilde ter Heijne for her approximation to the French philosopher
Simone Weil, who died in 1943 in England of emaciation and starving.
Who refused to eat more than her compatriots suffering under German
occupation, and who has been active in the Résistance and
Spanish Civil war.

A
woman, for whom authenticity could not be reached without own
existential experience; a socialist, who always advocated, that
philosophers have to be understandable for all, that also the mass of
workers can understand them. And who has been fulfilled by a deep
religiosity.

Even
in the past few years, the victim, the sacrifice for a common
guilt and the deliverance from suffer of the world have been a
central motive of the installations by the 1969 born ter Heijne.
Mostly fictious, say characteres from the
literature, used to be in the center of her works.
But this time, for the video installation "Qo akti?", that is now
displayed at the gallery Martina Detterer in Frankfurt (address
Hanauer Landstraße 20-22), the in Berlin living artist has
turned towards a historical person, that is today nearly out of the
public consciousness.

An
unrealized script by Liliana Cavani and Italo Moscati,
translated into the only of 1000 words consisting artificial
language "Glosa", that intends trending a conflict-free
understanding between all humans, makes the foundation
for this approximation. Words, phrases and always again
torturing doubts Simone Weil's lie above the scenes, alternate
flashing up on the screens, but the work is more than a
biographical sketch.

The
gentle colour spaces
lighting, when one of the screens extinguishes, the echoing of the
phrases in the head of the viewer, that all are impressions, that
remain. Because, without betraying her heroe, "Qo akti?" gets loose
- nearly unnoticed - away from the concrete fate, asks questions
about the constitution of society, makes the relation between
theory and praxis to subject and questions, just by the way,
her own point of view. The torturing questions of Simone Weil,
they are the ours.

[The
article continues with the critique of the installation
"F.F.A.L. - Fake Female Artist Life", that has been displayed at
the same time.]

Simone Weil - the heroe of the movie

Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909, and was educated at the Ecole
Normale Supérieure, where she was one of the first women
students. She became a teacher, but also worked on farms and factories,
choosing hard manual labour in order to experience the life of working
class. In 1936 she joined the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil
War, returning from the front when she badly burned in an accident. In
1942 she left France and joined the Free French in London. She died of
tuberculosis the following year, refusing to eat more than the rations
of those suffering Nazi occupation in her native France.

Her writings show her religious thoughts and ideas, drawn from many
sources - Christian, Jewish, Indian, Greek and Hindu - and focusing on
suffering and redemption. It brings the reader face ot face with the
human condition to the realm of the transcendent.

Liliana Cavani - author of the text

Liliana Cavani was one of the most prominent women film-makers in Italy
before 1978. Her rejection of a straight-forward feminist ideology has
provoked comment, apologies, and anger from some feminists.

With the Night Porter (1974), Cavani drew wide attention in America.

Cavani started making films for TV to do with Mussolini, Hitler, and
one about women fighters who had been part of the partisan resistance.
She was specifically interested in the nature of 'good' and 'evil', and
how these old moral binaries operated during times of war. It was her
investigative journalism into the personal experiences of victims after
the war that inspired her to make The Night Porter.

Script of the Movie

(The text of the movie.
The text is taken from a script for never shot movie
"Lettere dall' interno"
by Liliana Cavani and Italo Moscati, 1974.
It was translated into Glosa by Wendy Ashby, 2003.